SOURCE: Wittenberg, Judith Bryant. “Angles of Vision and Questions of Gender in Far from the Madding Crowd.” Centennial Review 30, no. 1 (winter 1986): 25-40.

In the following essay, Wittenberg explores motifs of vision and sight in Far from the Madding Crowd as they relate to male-female relations.

One of the more controversial issues in recent Hardy criticism concerns his attitudes toward and fictional treatments of women. For example, in a 1975 article, Katharine Rogers says that, although “Thomas Hardy repeatedly shaped his characters and plots to show his sympathy with women and his awareness of the disadvantages society laid upon them, … if we look beyond Hardy's conscious intentions to such things as repeated themes, incidental comments, and subtle differences in the presentation of analogous male and female characters, we find evidence that he could not altogether overcome the sexual stereotypes of his culture.”¹ Despite the fact that critics are unlikely to...